this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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This is why the idea of gender needs to disappear eventually. If we have it, we then need to label every single permutation of every expression. Maybe that's fun for some people, but it's definitely not fun for me.
To be clear I'm not saying you can't be a woman or a man or whatever. I understand I have to pay that tax. But in 200 years maybe it won't matter anymore because we'll all just be people. And that seems nice to me.
Not really. Like with music, some labels are broader than others. “Oh you like rock? Rock & Roll, Glam Rock, Hard Rock, Metal?” “Oh what kind of Metal, Trash, Death, Symphonic.”
The broader terms existing does not negate the more precise terms and visa versa.
I think the broader argument tends to boil down to the fact that unlike music, which people can simply not engage in describing on a regular basis, gender expression is something that requires much more active participation by all members of a society, and that gender is not inherently separate from the rest of the human experience.
It's already hard enough for some people to remember names, now imagine having to remember which of any number of thousands of neopronouns each individual person you know uses, for example.
Contrast that with their "we'll all just be people" stance, which seems to just be a different wording of gender abolition, and you have a world where people simply express themselves as they are without having to increasingly sublabel.
It's like how while people can have long hair and short hair, wear dark clothes and light clothes, have blue/brown/green/gray/etc eyes, be introverted or extroverted, have a large or small social battery, or experience and display any number of different characteristics, while not having to actually label those characteristics in general conversation or identification.
They're simply traits within the human experience, but not traits that we have to outwardly label and display on a very frequent basis, unlike the way we usually talk about gender. This is especially important considering how every single human being experiences things even a little differently from one another, thus meaning that the number of sublabels is theoretically as large, if not larger than the current population of the earth.
I don't deny that the labels can still exist, and be useful to people, but I think gender is often treated as if it has to be some sort of mythical separate part of the brain, independent from all the other variations in human experience, and thus it must have a separate label at all times, even while we don't particularly care to label and identify with other characteristics that are also within the human experience, some of which have historically flowed between being considered very gendered or less/not gendered, such as assorted personality traits, length of hair, preferred social activities and groups, certain clothing, etc.
Does it though?
I really don't care how people express as long as they aren't dicks and fascists about it.
I might be caught off guard sometimes, like the legitimately cute trans with the very male surfer dude voice at the train station the other day, but that's not the same as giving a damn about it.
I'd say so, yeah, but it does depend on your social circumstance, and of course broader cultures have different norms and linguistic styles too, so that can definitely impact it somewhat.
For example, if you're referring to someone, you pretty much have to use their pronouns. That's just how our language works, and it's not exactly something you can easily avoid.
The broader argument around gender abolition typically doesn't focus on the fact that society has to use the assorted gendered terms and traits though, I just thought it would be interesting to point out.
Generally speaking, it boils down to the second part of my previous point, which was that gender isn't inherently that special compared to many of the other ways we interpret and express our own identities, and the category can theoretically expand to levels so broad that it simply doesn't create much of a practical utility around consistently creating, using, and assigning sub-labels and further slicing up what we consider to be distinct categories into smaller and smaller pieces.
Additionally, gender abolitionists tend to just believe that by creating categories, you end up restricting what people are comfortable doing, and impose assumptions that could otherwise be more freeing to simply not have.
Anyone who currently uses any label, big or small, could still express themselves in a society that doesn't choose to use labels, but anyone feeling restricted by the labels we use today would no longer have that pressure facing them, and could thus develop more independently and freely as themselves, rather than what any societal categories impose on them.
This is actually something I think is becoming more and more pertinent as the acceptance of trans individuals grows, because as I'm sure you've probably seen, a lot of trans people feel that they have to meet certain goals to simply be accepted as who they are, to the point that they can feel pressured by society into doing things like buying certain clothes they otherwise may not have picked, spending more time worrying about the way their face looks, etc, just to be accepted.
And with sub-labels, you end up running into the same problem, but at a different scale, where small communities, or even sole individuals, can end up locking themselves into choices about their looks/mannerisms/activities/etc because after defining something, it becomes easier to conform to it even if you change over time outside of that label.
Obviously I don't speak for everyone here, and this is just my opinion, but I personally believe that a world with no labels, and much less limited avenues for free expression by every individual would be preferable to a world where it's expected that you label yourself and put yourself in a box, a category that people can define you as, that may not fully represent you as a person.
That's like saying we need to get rid of all color names since there are so many hues and shades. What are chartreuse and fuchsia? Better just get rid of green and purple since there are so many colors.
All we need are hex codes and rgb!
What if I want violet?
ee82ee?
I’m giving this the #00ff00 light
My gender is 0xffffff
Actually no, that's not what they said. They said sure you can have green, but not everything has to be green, blue, or red.
Also, purple is a lie.
The difference is you don't need to identify someone's color or commit a social faux pas. Keep your color names, I just don't want to have to figure out if you are green or lime green and address you as such.
It's not necessarily a social faux pas to misgender someone, that's a myth made up by conservatives. It's a faux pas to intentionally misgender people.
Sorta like if you call someone Jeb and they correct you and say it's Jed. It only becomes an issue if you insist on calling them Jeb.
Fair, but I don't want every social interaction I have to be me messing up and apologizing to people that I have missgendered them. That sounds way more exhausting than current social interactions are for me, and I already find them exhausting.
I hear you saying you you would like a universal gender neutral pronoun. You rarely need to know someone's gender when talking to them, just what pronouns to use.
Fortunately they/them works for this purpose, and is universally understood in English. It's perfectly acceptable to refer to someone as they/them or their name when having a conversation not specifically about gender and preferred pronouns.
Not knowing someone's gender has existed far longer than our modern understanding of the nuance of the concept.
Yes, this is what I mean. I am fine with they/them. I don't need to know anyone's specific pronouns or gender.
But if no one needs to know anyone's specific pronouns or gender, then why have it as a concept other than as a niche topic of discussion?
It's not irrelevant to everyone. We have a phrase that allows you to omit them, but that doesn't mean that everyone wants to do that.
Additionally, having the concept is needed for people to talk about their experiences and figure stuff out.
Their need to describe themselves in conversations that don't involve you is perfectly sufficient reason to have the words.
"Confuses you" is not a good enough reason to invalidate a core part of people's identity, particularly when it may have been hard for them to get things figured out.
It's important to remember that gender is irrelevant, but only if it's someone else's. It can be aggravating to be told that something you worked hard to figure out doesn't matter when it very much matters to you.
You are kind of confusing a systemic critique with some kind of personal attack against individual people.
From what seems like a decent enough article on Gender Abolitionism:
That "prescribe a role or identity" is why it's useful to get rid of. It leaves people with more freedom to form their identities, not less.
I very much like the gender identity that I have; there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not confusing anything. It kinda seems like you're reading something different into what they were saying.
They seem to be saying the ultimately misguided but best possible interpretation of "your gender doesn't matter to me, so why is it something that comes up?".
Finding your own manner of gender expression and not having it pushed on you from outside doesn't preclude having language to describe where you end up.
I know they weren't saying "shut up about your gender, it doesn't matter". To someone who is working on finding themselves, or had to work hard to do so, the sentiment can come across that way. For all aspects of identity, people don't want a "don't ask, don't tell" style tolerance in a void. They'd rather have the ability to express their identity, find community and so on.
As such, we need words to communicate these topics.
I'm happy for you! I am as well! I'm a little confused as to what that has to do with the bit you quoted though.
I'm not invalidating it. You can have names for it. I don't care. I just don't want it to be socially required for me to know.
I don't expect you to know what my favorite programming language is. So please don't expect me to know what gender you are when it doesn't matter for social interactions.
You create the impression that you're opposed to the concept when you say things along the lines of not seeing why it should be a concept.
I know it isn't your intention to convey dismissiveness. That doesn't mean that you're not, which is why there's a fair amount of pushback.
No one expects you to know, and you can get away with always using gender neutral without any issues.
You are expected to show people basic respect even if you don't get it and listen if they correct you. If I get your favorite programming language wrong and you tell me, it would be rude for me to keep referencing your passion for intercal or what have you.
But I am intending to be dismissive, because you are not putting forth any arguments.
Ok, lets go back to the basics. Is gender a social construct?
If you say it isn't, then you are enforcing the Man/Woman duality of gender that is linked to sex. This is transphobic and not linked to any science.
If you say it is. Then gender has value only to people who care about it. Just like programming languages only have value to people who care about that.
So in a fair and just world, if you say, people need to care about the gender of another person, then equally they should care about the favorite programming language, and so on and so on with everyone's thing. So my question is, ok, where does this end? What constitutes which things need to be acknowledged during a social interactions and which things don't.
My argument, is you can strip it down to just a name. That is all you need. This is the ideal we should work towards.
Do we drop pronouns and genders today? No, I have never claimed that. I specifically stated in my first post like 200 years from now, when we are all dead.
First, I was saying that you weren't intending on being dismissive of people's identities that they cared about, but thanks for specifically clarifying that you're being rude.
And you're evidently weak in reading comprehension.
Gender is more complex than a binary. It's not an inate thing, but it's also not entirely a social construct.
As you brought up: transgender people. If gender were a pure social construct then they wouldn't feel wrong with the gender assigned to them by society. Other parts of gender are clearly socially defined.
Even biological sex is more complex than a man woman duality and is partly mediated by social forces. (What biological properties matter for sex, and what variations of those result in being a different sex? Is an individual with xxy chromosomes male?)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/old-school-parenting-modern-day-families/201907/time-move-beyond-gender-is-socially-constructed/amp
I never said you needed to care, I said you needed to be polite if you make a mistake, and that people often take offense to being told that things about themselves they feel to be important don't matter.
You're entirely correct that we could all interact with each other only referring to each other by unique identifiers and the "I" and "you" pronouns.
That's an assinine conclusion though. It kinda glosses over the whole "people like to talk to each other and socialize" thing. People often like to discuss pointless things like "how they're doing", "their interests", "their families" and "hobbies".
You're not obligated to care or engage in these discussions, but people will take offense when you tell them that you don't care about their children because they're irrelevant.
I don't know how to tell you how to have a normal social interaction. If you have difficulty keeping track of what to do in social situations like that you might consider talking to a professional. Most people are able to use context to determine what needs to be shared in an interaction and don't have a hard rule or checklist.
Typically people start with basic biographical information, then some personal trivia to help bootstrap the stereotyping of what sort of person they are (I like to cook, I work in computer security, and I enjoy nature), and then information about how they fit into the social network (spouse, children, siblings, religious or social organization membership).
And shockingly, a lot of people find their gender to be important to them, and don't like being told it doesn't have value. Which is why, as I said before, people are giving you a lot of pushback.
There's resistance to the notion that the only details about people that matter are the ones that are needed for others to address them. It turns out that people have a notion of "identity" that extends beyond their name, and that beyond having that identity they would like to express it.
I am glad I went back to the basics.
No! It is just a social construct and by saying that you made yourself a whole lot of transphobic friends.
What it means to present as a man/woman changes over time. So there is no way gender can be innate to people.
Gender dysphoria is real but that doesn't make gender not a social construct. If you want to be a woman and women wear dresses, you will want to wear a dress. If women wear hoodies, then you want to wear hoodies.
Ok, from now on, every time you call me "deaf_fish", I will tut tut you as say I think you mean "deaf_fish who likes the C programming language". If you don't remember to address me as such I will feel bad and it won't be very polite of you.
Edit: I have a question for you if English never had gendered pronouns, would you still be disagreeing with me?
You're confusing gender expression with gender identity, and not doing a great job at reading comprehension as well.
Transphobes think gender is synonymous with biological sex. People who almost get it think that gender is entirely independent of biology. The truth is that gender is complicated. The link I shared gives a decent overview.
Do you think trans people transition because one day they decided to on a whim? Do you think if you flipped a coin to pick a child's gender that that's what they'd be?
Set aside that you've decided to argue and actually think for a moment. Where do you think gender dysphoria comes from?
I don't think your little argument is as compelling as you think. If you ask me to address you by a different name I would, and it is impolite to refuse to use someone's preferred name.
Let me guess, your one joke is "and I identify as an attack helicopter hyuck hyuck hyuck"?
The crux of the matter seems to be that you think you shouldn't need to be respectful to people except when it suits you, and you're irritated people might judge you for that. You've also got that trumped up conservative "there's so many rules nowadays! You can't just make a joke anymore!” energy.
Yes, if English never had gendered pronouns I'd still think gender as a concept would have reason to exist.
I can't tell if you are stupid, a troll, a transphobia, or being reflexively contrarian.
My point was never that gender shouldn't exist. And I admitted from my first post that I am willing learn peoples pronouns and address them as such (the tax comment). Just that I think it is a thing that should go away 200 years from now or so.
I don't see any point continuing this conversation with you. Have a nice life.
In the beginning, I was trying to explain why some people don't want to eliminate gender for the same reason racial minorities usually don't want to eliminate the concept of race.
Now I'm just enjoying marveling at your unwillingness to acknowledge that you might have had room to improve your understanding of something and trying to cast "trans people didn't choose their gender" as transphobia of all things. And in defense of "socialization is hard, I don't want to be polite" of all things.
Aight.
I will have a nice life. I hope you sit and have a good think deaf_fish who likes the C programming language. You might realize you had some misconceptions.
I see, that was a poor wording choice on my part. I see now why I was getting some push back.
Thanks for showing that to me. I should have been more specific.
I mean it wouldn't be every social interaction. Not even a majority. Something like 2% of the population identifies as something other than their assigned gender at birth, and the majority of those are transgender individuals who make it very clear how they want to be referred to.
Understand that these people will continue to have the same gender identity whether you understand it or not. The alternative to apologizing to people when you misgender them is... not apologizing for it.
Yeah today. But we know gender is a made-up category now. And already it's starting to diverge. I can easily imagine 20 years from now there being like 50 different genders, and the amount of people who don't associate with men or women will be much greater.
You do that already, and it's even worse actually because everyone has an even more individual and sometimes difficult to remember thing about them you have to balance in a social situation. It's called a name. You have to be told it, you can easily forget it, and it's a social slight to call someone the wrong name. Right now gender expression feels uncomfortable to have to tell people because of the politisation and stigma pressed on it, but it doesn't have to be anything different than asking for someone's name to better address them.
Yeah but I'm okay with names. I'm not okay with genders. At a bare minimum to interact with people in society, you need to know a name, some kind of identifier. If I knew of a way around that I would suggest it. However, interacting with people in society does not require knowing their gender. At least now it doesn't require it as it's pretty clear that gender is a made-up category.
Very optimistic of you. Oh well, I guess we need this kind of positive messaging in 2025.
I think it's awfully optimistic of you to think 200 years would be enough to erase gender bias even if most of society went into it with good intentions. Categorizing is too deep an instinct. It's easier for most people to add categories to the 2 most of us were taught as infants than to erase the concept entirely.
I suppose you could use they/them for everyone, to acknowledge the othergender aspects of them that may not be apparent or recognized by anyone including themselves.
But you'd piss a lot of people off.
Then again, that might be a good thing.
My hope is that most of the pissed off people would be dead due to natural causes.
Personally, i wouldn't be too pleased to take a bird home and find out she has a penis twice the size of mine.
Jokes aside, with no offence intended, how can I as a person attracted to breasts and vaginas, know what i'm getting into when I'm talking to someone. I don't want to lead someone on but at the same time i don't want to be led on.
or am i confusing sex and gender again? I'm honestly trying but i'm by no means fluent on the topic.
I'm so glad you said breasts!! Come with me on an exploratory walk:
Let's say you fall for a woman. You're getting intimate and she stops you to tell you something serious. See, she hasn't been honest about her body with you. She hasn't dated in awhile and didn't know when the right time was to tell you, but she wants you so much that it can't be avoided now.
She had her breasts removed for an unspecified medical reason. You thought she had a great rack, but those were prosthetics. Despite her biological circumstances he happens to identify with having breasts and prosthetics make her feel confident and normal.
Has there been deception? Have you been led on? I don't think so, I think this was this just part of learning whether you're compatible with someone. Only you know whether the absence of breasts is a deal breaker for you, and you get to decide freely in that moment.
Does that help?
I don't think there was any deception because she has been straight up and honest. I think you've helped me to understand.
I think if you're interested in dating or sex, and you have preferences that are deal breakers. Ask for what they're equipped with.
Similar to how if you're planning on dating someone today and if have sex is important to you. You communicate that. And ask them if they are asexual.
It's perfectly okay to have deal-breaking preferences for these things.
Good question.
Thanks for this, I think your advice is the most practical for a variaty of situations.
Sex: not binary, a lot more confusing the more scientific you make it. Can absolutely be changed. It's coming up on being an outdated term pretty quickly, if not irrelevant already. Probably the least understood term by 99.999999% of people.
Gender: binary exists, a lot of people exist outside of it, too. Also dynamic and fluid. It's the role you play, socially. A lot of people think it should be eliminated. I'm personally on the fence on that. (Bonus: gender expression: is not the same as gender. Gender is who one is, gender expression is how one does it.)
SexUALITY: may be what you're confused on. Is defined by the term sex, but generally refers to the sex of you and the sex of who you're into. Which, if you go by what "sex" means, gets confusing really fast.
So stop worrying about labels, go with the flow, and since life is too short as it is, stop letting society tell you things that you like are acceptable, and if you find it pretty and it feels good and you aren't hurting anybody AND there's consent of all parties involved, GO FOR IT.
I think I'm forgetting stuff here, but the gist is to stop being afraid and stop judging and hating. Accept your ignorance, accept humility, and stop being afraid of learning. Nobody's coming to get you besides the fascists and maybe the tankies.
Ok my morning dump is over gotta wipe have a nice day.
Sex is defined by genetics
Gender is defined by you
Sex is what's in your pants, gender is how you look.
This just reminds me of the shitpost of humans/aliens.
It was a "fancy" bathroom sign for men and women.